Ukrainian leaders predicted there would be more gruesome discoveries in the days ahead while Russia described the "tragedy" of mounting troop losses and the economic hit from sanctions, as Ukrainians were evacuated from eastern cities before an anticipated major offensive.

The U.N. General Assembly suspended Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council, expressing "grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis". Russia then quit the council.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO and other sympathetic countries.

The EU's ambassadors agreed a fifth sanctions package on Russia with a coal embargo containing a 120-day wind-down period to give member states time to find alternative suppliers, following pressure from Germany to delay the measure.

The besieged southern port of Mariupol, where the mayor said over 100,000 people were still trapped, was also a target.

Authorities in Dnipro, a city in central-eastern Ukraine, also urged women, children and the elderly to leave.

More war-crimes
The mayor of Bucha, near Kyiv, said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation.

Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.

In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could be only the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying “there it is much more horrible.”

In the seaport city of Mariupol, Ukranian authorities expected to find much the same. “The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes,” Zelenskyy said.
-Reuters/AP